After Flooding, FEMA Aid Is Arriving. But Some Are Still on Their Own.

Six days after Hurricane Helene, North Carolina was getting help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and others. But officials still faced obstacles reaching some areas.

In the western mountains of North Carolina outside of Asheville, the small communities of Cruso and Canton, wrecked by Hurricane Helene, were not waiting for help from the state or the federal government.

Local restaurants were dispatching food deliveries to homes each evening. Some residents were driving excavators and tractors to clear debris from roads, while others were checking on who had power and who did not. No one was sure whether any disaster relief was coming anytime soon.

“We’ve never depended on them before. Why should we depend on them now?” said Amber Capps, the president of the Cruso Community Center. “We’re independent.”

The overwhelming devastation wrought by Helene left many in western North Carolina without food, water or gas, cut off by impassable roads and isolated by crippled cellular networks. With each day that passes, frustration has grown in some areas over the disaster response.

In interviews on Wednesday, state and local officials described a prolonged and arduous effort that had been hampered by the scale of the devastation and the heavy damage to many roadways.

There appeared to be progress in some areas, with truckloads of relief supplies filling distribution centers. More remote areas remained cut off. Helicopters delivered airdrops of supplies in some places, many of them dispatched by governors of other states. Elsewhere, residents craned their necks to the sky to watch as military planes flew overhead.

“We have the National Guard out here, which has been a huge help,” said Dillon Huffman, a spokesman for Haywood County, which includes Cruso and Canton. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had also arrived, he added. “They’re not assisting homeowners yet, but they are assisting us and they are assessing damage.”

President Biden flew in a helicopter over damaged areas of North Carolina on Wednesday with Gov. Roy Cooper and Asheville’s mayor, Esther Manheimer. Mr. Biden ordered 1,000 active-duty troops to assist with recovery efforts, adding to what officials said were more than 6,000 National Guard personnel from 12 states. Hundreds of FEMA officials were on the ground in North Carolina, officials said, including the agency’s administrator, Deanne Criswell.

At the same time, the mountainous region torn apart by river floods faced many challenges that could not be immediately handled by state and federal responders.

The state’s Transportation Department said it was still in the process of clearing main roads, and continuing to discover even more roads blocked by trees or mudslides. Communications systems and electrical lines still must be repaired. Private roads and bridges that were washed away have also left many stranded.

“Let me assure you: The city, county, state and federal government are working in a coordinated manner and as fast as we can,” Debra Campbell, the city manager of Asheville, said at a news conference. “However, our recovery efforts will take weeks, not days.”

Adding to the challenge was a looming shortfall in federal funding. The homeland security secretary, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, warned on Wednesday that FEMA did not have enough funding to ride out the rest of hurricane season.

“We are expecting another hurricane hitting — we do not have the funds, FEMA does not have the funds, to make it through the season,” he said. He urged Congress to make more money available.

At least 183 people in six states were killed by Helene, a number that officials said was likely to grow as more emergency responders reach those who remain unaccounted for.

While Florida and Georgia were transitioning to recovery efforts from the storm, western North Carolina remained primarily focused on search and rescue, officials said. In Henderson County, south of Asheville, teams were still working through a list of more than 600 people who went missing after the storm hit. Not all of them could be immediately reached.

The mountainous landscape of the region is very different than in a place like Florida, said Keith Turi, FEMA’s acting associate administrator for response and recovery.

“It’s a challenging environment to operate in,” he said in an interview, both for rescue operations and the eventual recovery. “Because of how significant the flooding was, it’s going to present long-term challenges to rebuilding.”

State officials could not provide a timeline for restoring the roadways that remain blocked and, in some cases, destroyed by the storm, which churned across the region last week. Officials said that had delayed rescue efforts.

“We still have communities that haven’t been reached yet,” said Mark Letson, chairman of the board of commissioners in Jackson County, west of Asheville. He said the community of Canada remained cut off. “We’re still working to get to them,” he said. “You can only cut so many trees a day.”

While most outside assistance has come from state government, Mr. Letson said he had no complaints about the federal response.

But there were plenty of complaints in the community of Swannanoa, which was among the most affected by the storm. In a trailer park known as Alan Campos, a Latino enclave where most residents speak Spanish, many were left homeless after floodwaters swept away mobile homes.

“We need help, but I have not seen anyone from FEMA, I don’t even know where to begin,” said Nelson Cruz, 44, a resident whose trailer was all but destroyed. “I need to know if this area is going to be classified as uninhabitable or if we are going to be expected to start rebuilding.”

Juan Villegas, 56, said his trailer had also suffered water damage, and he sent his wife and a nephew who live with him to stay with a relative an hour away. He kept an eye out for any outsider offering assistance. But most were church volunteers offering temporary supplies like bottled water. Some of them told him to go online and start a FEMA application, but that was not something he could do right now.

“We are cut off from the rest of the world,” he said. “We are going to have to wait until they come here. It may be a while.”

Residents, particularly around Cruso and Canton, compared the agency’s response with what they saw as FEMA’s less-than-perfect handling of flooding three years ago from a tropical storm. The effects of that storm were much more localized, and it took three weeks to get a federal disaster declaration approved, said Canton’s mayor, Zeb Smathers.

The experience three years ago left many in the area resigned to the idea that in the aftermath of Helene, they would again be left to fend for themselves.

“They gave me $358,” Steve Chaney, 58, said of FEMA in 2021, though he estimated that his home took about $13,000 worth of damage from that storm. Like others in the region, he was confident that the community would be able to rely on its own residents to rebuild.

So far, there has been “a better FEMA response now,” Mayor Smathers said. “From zero hour,” he added, “state, federal support has been on the ground.”

In Asheville, Mayor Manheimer said 40 FEMA officials were in the city on Wednesday. She said that she was happy with the federal response so far, but noted that it had been less than a week since Helene hit.

Experts in disaster response said that some of the anger and frustration over the federal response to Helene, though understandable, was based on a misunderstanding of the nature and role of federal disaster relief.

Despite FEMA’s role in the public’s mind as the ultimate first-responder, its immediate job after a disaster is narrower.

The agency is responsible for ensuring that supplies like bottled water are stockpiled and available, according to Beth Zimmerman, who managed disaster response for FEMA during the Obama administration. But distributing those supplies, she said, was the job of state and local officials, and aid groups.

FEMA is also responsible for deploying search-and-rescue teams and other specialized staff, and helping survivors sign up for its assistance programs, which provide emergency cash and money to stay in hotels or other shelters, and pay for emergency home repairs, among other services.

A big part of FEMA’s role after disasters is reimbursing state and local governments for the money they spend. The agency isn’t responsible for clearing roads that have been cut off by debris; that falls to state and local officials, and sometimes the U.S. Transportation Department. But FEMA will help reimburse much of the cost of that work.

In the meantime, many communities are making do on their own.

The inside of Jukebox Junction Restaurant and Soda Shoppe in Canton had been transformed by Wednesday afternoon: stacks of bread and water on tabletops, a line of spaghetti sauce jars on the counter behind the original jukebox, and diapers piled up in front of the window.

The restaurant has also become a hub for residents to convene and catch up on news. The biggest frustration for many has been the lack of communication: Local officials have sent out boil-water notices or alerts on where to get resources, but many people do not have good enough internet service to get them.

“That’s frustrating,” said Michael Graham, 65, one of the owners of the shop. He was still periodically trying to call people from church, just to see if they were OK. But overall, he said, he had been “impressed by the reaction time.”

The Health Department had already processed and cleared their water sample on Tuesday, he said. And in their parking lot, a medical team from a county in the Outer Banks had set up for welfare checks.

Mark Barrett contributed reporting from Asheville, N.C.